Streaming Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that impose unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous gamers have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a single branch—meaning, the exact same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, like the time he played the title solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the story with no stamina. A one-branch playthrough, though, seems impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is especially relevant when dealing with the most fragile tool in the entire game. Yet if the branch shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple explanation is glitches. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “preparation” file where he progresses standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this character acquires full stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and generates a third save file that combines the states of the first two files.

That causes new issues, though. The fused save file has a protagonist that did not acquired the capability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit addresses readily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the game that fails to open some areas. As with other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory form of the hero is programmed so that he cannot break any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the durability issue, as the character he transfers between universes is the one from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that makes encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful number of consumables to boost his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He also employs a glitch that allows Link to phase through the world. Some would consider these methods grounds to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He further implements a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll ban one viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through several of the game's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube edit of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take several long hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes Link's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is after all just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the game compels the player to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned more than 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.